Hey, and welcome back to Words of Life. Last week, we began a six-part series on missions. This is a conversation that I had with three people who have experienced missions and mission work in very different ways. We have a Salvation Army officer, Sandra Pawar, and she has served the Salvation Army in communities around the world. We have Jessie Fagerstrom, and she used to run our young adult missions trips for the youth department in the Salvation Army Southern Territory. And we have John Avery, who has a very unique background in that when he was younger, he took part in an 11-month long mission trip where he was in a different community in a different part of the world each month. We would love to hear from you.
Do you have a story about how a mission trip really shaped your life? We want to hear it. Send us an email, hello, at words of life podcast.org. We hope you enjoy this week's conversation.
God bless. As women, we're pulled in every direction, and we often put pressure on ourselves to do all and be all. We may feel overwhelmed or isolated and wonder, is it just me?
Do other women feel this way too? God Hears Her from Our Daily Bread Ministries is a community of women who through honest conversations, personal stories, and biblically-based resources encounter God's grace and flourish together as a sisterhood in Christ. Visit GodHearsHer.org to experience podcasts, blogs, devotionals, and more that encourage us to lean on Jesus, the one who turns life's messiness into meaning.
Again, that's GodHearsHer.org. We are back, and last week we started a new series on missions. This is our second week with my friends, Jesse, Sandra, and John. You guys can say hey or something. Hey, guys. Hey. Good to be here.
Great to see you. So last week we talked about what are missions, and we discussed the Great Commission and just kind of started to touch on this topic. But today we're kind of going to zoom in on the Salvation Army because, of course, this is the Salvation Army, and the history of the Army and kind of what really set in motion how and why we do missions today within the Salvation Army.
So this one will be a little more inside baseball, but I know a lot of people who listen to this show care about the Army and love the Army and would probably like to know a little more about what we do, where we do it. From its origin, William Booth always had this saying, and I don't know if he said this or people said this about him, but soup, soap, and salvation. And from early on, his goal was to preach the gospel, but he understood that you could only do that once some basic human needs are met. And if you're going into a very impoverished community, well, you know, just having them sit down and listen to an hour-long sermon while their stomachs are growling, they're not really going to receive what you have to say. I think that just goes back to what mission work is. We're caring for people as human beings first, before anything else.
Yeah. I mean, that's what our mission is. It's meeting human needs in His name without discrimination.
William Booth, from the beginning, that was always his biggest thing was to like go for the loss. The people that weren't being reached out to by other churches that were kind of being ignored, looked down on, and he said, Jesus loves you too. This isn't just for the people with money, the people in the pews over here.
We need to go out and reach those people who aren't experiencing that love from their surroundings and their communities and show them that community of Jesus and of the church. I remember growing up in Kenya, I always got the sense that they used food as a way to invite people into the presence of God, right? So if your tummy is full, then your spirit can thrive, right? If we meet this first need, right, so that you can come in full, right, like not hungry anymore, then it frees up your spirit to receive what God has for you. So that was always a really big something.
We would always have these big pots of beans and rice and people would eat until they were totally full and then they were able to enter into the presence of God. Well, there's just something about just sharing a meal with someone too. Absolutely. Especially in Jesus' time, that meant something. To sit down at someone's table meant that we're cool. Yes. And so that was a huge deal for Jesus to hang out with tax collectors and sinners because they were like, no, that means that you're okay with them.
He said, well, I am. I love them. So not to talk about food too much, full disclosure, we're recording this right before lunch. We won't spend the entire episode talking about food, but yeah, I think that's crucial and food just represents so much more too. I mean, you know, putting a shirt on someone's back and shoes, that's top priority. I think that it's great that you can just do kind of mission, feeding someone, giving them a shirt, some shoes, like right where you are, you know, and that's what the Salvation Army is really good at. I think the fact that you can do that wherever you are is really important.
An example of that is being my husband. We were in Sarasota. We lived there and it was at a time when there was a lot of Afghani refugees that had come into the city and we happened to be there at that time and they needed, it was like the eye doctor that had to come and look at their eyes. And so we were able to offer up our parking lot. And so then we opened up our church so that they could get some luggage, some suitcases, some clothes and stuff like that. And for our church to be open to do that, that was just something really little that we could do for that community.
But that is also something really important. When they came into our church and saw that we were willing to do that for them, they were really amazed that we would do that, that a Christian church would do that for them in that community. And so, I mean, that's what mission is too, right? And we didn't have to go overseas.
We didn't go to Afghanistan to do that for them. We did that in our community there. And that is what mission is too, right? And that is giving them the clothes, that is doing exactly what William Booth said in that community right where you are. So I think that is, that's doing mission. Yeah.
Yeah. And you think about the history of just like the impact the Salvation Army has had on the world from its founding too, and the social policies and stuff that it was setting into place back in England in the day. But you kind of move forward in today's time as well. And we're still doing like all of those same things too. And it may not be quite on the same kind of scales as it was needed back in the day, but to those people, it's needed just as much.
And so you have those kinds of programs that you are running. And then you also have our EDS programs that are reaching out to people who have lost so much and you have our anti-human trafficking ministries. And there's just so much that we're still trying to reach those same people with those needs.
They just need that hope. And we have resources to offer to them, but differently from other organizations, perhaps we're also offering that with the love of Jesus and saying, there's more to this than just being fed. Well, specifically emergency disaster services.
You've seen a lot of this in action being one of our media people and been on the ground filming just to tell the story of what has happened. And you know, these can be people that, you know, they were fine. They had a roof over their head and then all of a sudden they'd tornado or something hits and all of a sudden now there's someone in need. And on the worst day of their life, Salvation Army rolls in and just gives them a little sense of normalcy and just, here's a cup of coffee, here's some food, let's sit down and talk about this. And then, you know, through that we're handing out cleanup kits and clothing, but then also directing them to where to find help through their insurance company and all this kind of stuff. But like that first touch of the spiritual emotional care to just be someone who's there on someone's worst day. That's another way that missions can just be in your own backyard and even temporary.
Yeah. And ultimately when we think of meeting human need, right, we can meet the hunger, we can meet the difficulties, the issues, but ultimately what people need is to be seen and to be heard and to be loved. And we at the Salvation Army, I feel do a really great job at those really important human needs as well. As women, we're pulled in every direction and we often put pressure on ourselves to do all and be all. We may feel overwhelmed or isolated and wonder, is it just me?
Do other women feel this way too? God Hears Her from Our Daily Bread Ministries is a community of women who through honest conversations, personal stories, and biblically based resources encounter God's grace and flourish together as a sisterhood in Christ. Visit GodHearsHer.org to experience podcasts, blogs, devotionals, and more that encourage us to lean on Jesus, the one who turns life's messiness into meaning.
Again, that's GodHearsHer.org. Speaking also of just like in your backyard, this kind of ministry of presence, particularly too. We saw this a lot during the pandemic of people just feeling isolated and not connected because they weren't able to go out. And we're still, I think, experiencing a lot of the effects of that time where we weren't able to be with each other. But one of the places that we were able to be was online and through social media.
And I'm speaking as like our territorial social media strategist. That is just as much of a mission field as anywhere else too, like to be the voice of Jesus and to share that love and to just be there for people who are online. That's for so many people who are hurting. They're not going out into their communities and experiencing those same types of ministry from traditional forms.
But they're online and they're hurting and you can see it in comments and everything. And it's still our place to be the love of Jesus in that place as well. And to say like, hey, I know this is hard, but we're here and we love you and Jesus loves you. And just in everything we're harvesting is essentially a reflection of Jesus as well too. Well, we're still learning lessons from COVID and hoping that we don't forget the lessons that we learned from COVID. I read something that in 2019, it was the first year that more churches in the U.S. closed than opened.
That was right on the cusp of COVID. And so how are we thinking about now that the church's four walls are expanded to social media, to your own backyard, what are we doing to get outside of our comfort zone and actually go out? Before this series started, we would have heard for two weeks testimonies from kids, well, young adults who just got back from SSC, which stands for? Summer Service Corps, Salvationist Service Corps. Salvationist Service Corps.
Sorry, my bad. Salvationist Service Corps. It was Summer Service Corps once, but now it's Salvation, yeah.
Which I want you to kind of like share a little bit more about what that program is. It blew me away because when they came, they were fresh home from this trip that they just came back from. And those were tearful, passionate stories about these kids that they invested in, especially not to knock the Norway one, but especially in the Malaysia one, they were there at a children's home. And the stories that they had about one kid just coming up to them being like, you didn't have to be here.
I've been left here, but you came and just said that you loved me. And they were just blown away by this. I know you probably have more stories to share, but just shine a light on this program for us.
Yeah. So it is a annual program where young adults apply to be on a mission team, generally it's somewhere between six to 10 individuals on a team, and they will spend six weeks, six to eight weeks out in the field, right? So they go somewhere in the world where the Salvation Army has a presence and they minister. They will do everything from giving their testimonies to putting together little performances about Jesus. They will help with things like our Vacation Bible Schools around the world.
And of course, engage in things like painting buildings and helping with different programs that are happening. So it's an amazing opportunity for our young people to get plugged in to what's happening, because there is so much happening in the Salvation Army around the world. So just being able to see that firsthand, and honestly, it has changed the lives of these young people.
And sometimes it even causes them to themselves want to be pastors or want to continue in mission work in some way. That's a very, very powerful program. I think it's so great that each of us have been able to tell stories about how you can do missions in such a different way, like so many creative things. And I think that's great that that is what the Salvation Army is, right? That we are a creative church, that we don't just do it one way, you know, we're not just, like you said, within the four walls. There's so many ways that we can reach people. There's so many ways that we can fall with the mission of God.
And I love that. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life. We want to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the show. Visit lifeaudio.com where you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network.
They have shows about prayer, Bible studying, parenting, and more. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. No matter what you're going through, you are not alone. Sis, if you've experienced pain in your father-daughter relationship, I want you to know that you are loved and seen. I'm Kia Stevens, host of the Hope for Women with Father Wounds podcast, and I created my show to help you exchange your father wounds for the love of God the Father. Join me for encouragement, wisdom, and scripture. Just search Hope for Women with Father Wounds on lifeaudio.com or wherever you get your podcast. The Historical Jesus Podcast is the sweeping saga of the life and times of Galilean Jesus of Nazareth, as well as the faith, religion, and church founded to honor and disseminate his acts and teachings. Join me, Mark Vinet, on this fascinating journey through time exploring the many great works of Christian theology, literature, architecture, music, and art inspired by the words and deeds of Jesus Christ.
